Nearly 30 years later, ‘Practical Magic 2’ reminds us that some magic never leaves

Dianne Wiest’s Aunt Jet and Stockard Channing’s Aunt Frances remain two of the most delightful parts of the Owens universe. Their eccentricity, warmth and peculiar wisdom feel wonderfully intact, as though the passing of time has only made them more themselves. Seeing them alongside Sally and Gillian again carries a particular kind of ache, the lovely kind that comes from seeing characters you grew up with grow older too. Because that is perhaps the quietest magic of Practical Magic 2: it lets its characters age.

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And then, naturally, there is a new generation of Owens women. Joey King steps into the role of Kylie Owens, while Maisie Williams plays her sister Antonia, Sally’s daughters and the next generation to inherit the family’s complicated relationship with magic.

There are new love stories, too. New faces enter this world, including Lee Pace as Ian Wright and Xolo Maridueña as Gideon, adding new romantic possibilities and new complications to a family that has always been cursed, quite literally, when it comes to love. But romance has never really been the only love story in Practical Magic. The real love story has always been family.

The heart of the film remains remarkably familiar. There is still the moonlight. The candles. The eccentricity. The sisterhood. The flowers. The old books. The feeling that somewhere, just beyond what we can see, there might be another world hiding underneath our own. And, of course, there is magic. But perhaps the most magical thing about watching Practical Magic 2 is not seeing magic return. It is seeing what happens when something we loved returns with us.

We have changed since 1998. The characters have changed. The actresses have changed. Even the way we understand love, family and womanhood has changed. Yet sitting there with Sally and Gillian again, it becomes wonderfully easy to remember the people we were when we first met them. That is the gift of nostalgia when it is done right. It does not simply ask you to remember. It asks you to feel.

Practical Magic 2 may belong to a new generation of Owens women, but it never forgets the women who came before them. It is a continuation, certainly, but it is also a love letter to the film that made us fall in love with this beautiful family in the first place.

If you grew up loving Practical Magic, or if you simply want to experience a little bit of that Owens family magic for yourself, Practical Magic 2 is now showing in Philippine cinemas. Go see it on the big screen, preferably with someone you love.

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